And The Angels Will Weep For You
by The Duchessina
Summary: Henry Higgins has never broken a promise. He's not about to start now. Oneshot. Dark Higgins/Eliza.


**A/N: I love the idea of Higgins/Eliza, but I think it wouldn't be the loving relationship we would all love! ;) Besides that, I always wondered if Henry was serious when he threatened to hurt Eliza in his mother's house. (And when he threatened to "let the hellcat freeze!" as well. But that's for another story!)**

* * *

And the Angels Will Weep For You

_You take one step in his direction and I'll ring your neck. — Henry Higgins, _My Fair Lady

It was a bleak, gloomy day, typical for London in that season, that Eliza Doolittle was buried.

She was too young for death, Pickering remembered the preacher saying at the small service held directly before the burial. She'd not had time for a full life. The angels would surely weep for a spirit come to Heaven too soon.

The rain gathered strength as the final words were spoken over a mound of dirt over the pretty girl's grave. Pickering noticed young Freddy turning his head away from the sight as they lowered Eliza into the ground.

"A wicked, naughty girl," came the thought, unbidden, with the distinct tone of Henry Higgins in it. Pickering made his excuses, and left the cemetery. He had one more funeral to attend.

* * *

_"You wretched girl!" He hit her face, hard, and she fell to the damp alleyway street, shock clear on her face, the tears, still unshed, beginning to leave her eyes._

_"Stay away from me!" she shouted, desperate for any kind of help. His fingers tightened around her throat and she screamed._

* * *

Henry Higgins always makes good on his promises.

After living with the man, talking with him, watching him, Colonel Pickering should have known. He hadn't been there, of course; but he'd heard from both Eliza and Mrs. Higgins about the conversation, and the thing that stuck with him was that vow—and he should have known that Henry had been serious. No man would steal his secrets, and Henry wouldn't have them told by a guttersnipe—a flower girl, no more important that a piece of dirt.

And Eliza, God bless her soul, had done it. She'd gone, in her hour of need, to that Hungarian to be an assistant. And Henry killed her for it.

_

* * *

_

"By God, you did what?"

_She lifted her head; she was proud; her haughty glare silenced his next sentence. "I've become a teacher."_

_"Liar!" he yelled, "Fiend! Thief! Why, you corrupt, heartless guttersnipe!"_

_In the back of his mind, he recognized the beginnings of madness; but he took no notice of it. He grabbed her arm, and forced her further away from the street, into the darkness that awaited them._

* * *

Pickering was too tired to weep. Two friends in one savage blind rage of jealousy and hate.

Mrs. Pearce was at Higgins' house when Pickering returned from the funerals. She gave him one sad, long look as she handed him a tray. She knew he'd be drunk as a dog in the morning, and he knew she'd cry herself to sleep.

A curt nod from Pickering, and the housekeeper quietly fled the dark parlour. The place where it all began. The room of the damned.

"Higgins, why?" Pickering asked aloud before he drowned his third glass of whiskey. The devil's drink. Poor man's wine. Pickering's salvation.

_

* * *

_

"I knew you'd strike me one day!"

_He slapped her again. "Well, you were right," he snarled as his hands pushed her into the brick wall. "All too right." She didn't catch the hint of sadness in his voice._

_"I hate you!"_

_As I do you, he thought._

* * *

They found the diamond ring a week after the funeral. It was hidden under Higgins' bed, in a large box, full of papers, and photos, and one old red rose. When Mrs. Pearce opened the small velvet case, she had known what she'd find. A large diamond. The ring itself had already clearly been fitted—Higgins had known her size.

Pickering found the woman an hour later, her tears spent, anger in its place.

_

* * *

_

He could do nothing, say nothing. The body before him sneered at the man, even in death, but he could not bring himself to touch the thing again.

_He looked at the ground, where his gun lay._

_He prayed._

* * *

Pickering replayed ever conversation, even a year after the deaths. Two days stuck out in his mind—the day Eliza first came, when she was given her ultimatum, and the day she left, when Higgins threatened her.

And no matter what he did, he could not forget the sound of her voice.

_

* * *

_

In the silence that followed, one could almost see the souls on their way to their final destinations: clearly very different ones.

_And in the whisper of wind that followed the silence, one could almost hear her voice: The angels will weep for you. _

_I will weep for you._

* * *


End file.
